How to Make a Springpole Lathe for Bowl Turning, Part 3

During the 16th century living standards rose and those who were well-off could afford pewter plates and dishes. Salt-glazed stoneware jugs from Belgium and Germany gradually took over from the wooden bowl as the commonest drinking vessel and English potters started making more earthenware dishes. However, the biggest challenge to woodware came in the late 17th and 18th centuries when cheap glazed pottery, dishes and bowls became available for the first time.

(For those of you who are coming to my blog from Robin Wood's blog, I have updated How to Make a Spring Pole Lathe for Bowl Turning with Parts 4 and 5, so please check out these newer posts. I don't want you to miss a single episode! Wilson)

The lathe bed is upright, I decided to level it with a scrub and jack plane. This is the fourth wooden lathe that I've built and I know the need to have a flat and level bed, if it isn't there will be problems with the poppits. They need to line up correctly to each other or things won't run right.

Here again I cheated, I used my little Stihl chainsaw to cut out the slot for the legs of the poppits. I need to finish truing up the inside of the slot so the poppits will fit properly.

I split the wood for the poppits from another Douglas fir. After I opened that tree up I realized that I should have used it for the bed of the lathe, it was a nice tree with fairly straight grain. These poppit blanks are about 5 inches square and I hewed them with an axe.

Here are the poppits. After I clean up the slot, I will cut the legs for the poppits and then cut out the slots for the wedges that will hold them in place on the lathe bed.

Right after I took this photos we got several storms that each dumped over a foot of snow and the temperatures dropped below 0 degrees F. Needless to say it's been a little too cold and snowy to do anymore work on the lathe.

I hope to work on the lathe this weekend, it's supposed to be warmer so I can do some outside work in the snow. Speaking of home life, there was a cow moose in our yard last weekend, but she took off before I could get a photo of her!